Dangerous and Delightful: The Paradox of Holiness
Did your parents tell you not to stare at the sun? My mother said it would make me blind. And yet, I did! Something about the sun was, and still is, mesmerising.
God’s holiness is like that; it’s a paradox. It’s mesmerising and morbid. It is delightful and dangerous. It is beautiful and beastly. How can that be? The reason is that the effect of God’s holiness depends on the state of the one encountering it.
The prophet Isaiah got a front row seat to God’s majesty, filling the temple and surrounded by worshipping angels proclaiming, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Is 6:3). God is perfectly holy, echoed timelessly by surrounding angels who know and see God in his fullness. These angels are not bored or inarticulate. They want to be there and there is simply no better word to describe God than “holy.”
Holy means set a part, unique, different. The question is, why is he set apart? Holiness isn’t simply about moral purity, though that’s part of it. It’s more than a character trait; it’s a category of superiority. It is not like a competition where God is simply superior at being loving, faithful and beautiful. Actually, God in an altogether different category of love and faithfulness and beauty because he is the source of those characteristics. And so, as the perfect source, his reference point and expectation is flawlessness. That is why, counterintuitively, the closer one gets to God (humans or angels), the more “set apart” he appears because the chasm between the beholder and God’s holiness is simply unattainable through effort.
That isn’t just intimidating, that is unimaginably fearful because God is set apart in power and purity. Hence, he has the ability to eradicate everything flawed before him. Notice Isaiah responds with fear and conviction. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips” (Is 6:5). That wasn’t rehearsed religious homage to appease God. It was a raw reaction to encountering something otherworldly that he’d never encountered before. That awareness brought respite as an angel offers a coal to atone for sin, allowing Isaiah to speak to the Lord with confidence, “Here am I! Send me” (Is 6:8).
This matters for us because God’s holy presence is at the central of the universe and it is the most wonderful place to be. But it’s like paradise with a flaming sword guarding it (Gen 3:24). Rebels do not freely walk into the king’s presence. They, like us, need an invitation and a covering. Thus, the Bible is a story of how rebellious people can dwell in the presence of a holy God. Despite our longing and desperate efforts, it is humanly impossible. We cannot enter God’s blazing holiness any more than we can land on the surface of the sun.
God gave Israel rules and regulations to help them understand the danger. They could occasionally “get near the sun,” but they couldn’t touch it or settle there. Living in paradise was out of the question. Only once a year, after arduous preparation, could the high priest could go into the most holy place of the temple for a short time.
Fortunately, God had something better in mind. We see that God’s holiness leads to expressions of loving pursuit and intimate grace, not just separation and judgement, because He is set apart in love and the source of holy love.
In Revelation we see another picture of angels proclaiming God’s holiness, but there is more. People now lay their crowns before God’s throne and there is the lamb, to whom they sing a new song, “You are worthy!” Because Jesus met God’s righteous entry requirements, he is now able to bring people into God’s holy presence through his atonement on the cross.
Scripture says, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). Now, in Christ, the temple is open and we have been made like him. We can enter freely without fear or condemnation because the paradox of God’s holiness has been resolved.